The next 15 years of expansion at the top tech giants could eclipse anything
that has gone before

Fifteen years ago, Amazon was a bookseller, Google was a small web search engine and Facebook didn’t exist.

As anyone who has been paying any attention whatsoever knows, those three companies now rank as three of the most powerful businesses in the world.

As they have grown, they have branched out into new areas, regularly stepping on each other’s toes. Amazon has moved beyond retail to offer its own gadgets and cloud services, pitting it against Google. Google has tried to pull more people into its ecosystem by launching Google+, a social network rather like Facebook. And Facebook has gone to war with Google by turning itself into a messaging platform.

Their rivalry is evident in the frequency with which they vie for the same companies. Earlier this year, Facebook paid $19bn for Whatsapp, trouncing Google’s earlier overtures. This week, Google bought Titan Aerospace, a drone maker, after its talks with Facebook fell apart.

It is relatively easy to make sense of these tech giants gobbling up other social networks. They are paying for whichever platform is likely to become the next big thing, and could threaten their existence further down the line. The rush for drones is less predictable, but it is part and parcel of the same quest for dominance.

As the tech giants struggle to find new ways to grow, they know they have to increase the size of the audience they can sell to, so they are in a new space race to get the rest of the world connected.

Titan produces solar-powered unmanned aircraft, which can fly non-stop for years, hundreds of metres above the ground. Google snapped the company up for an undisclosed sum to help with “Project Loon” – its scheme to use high-altitude balloons to beam wireless signals to parts of the world currently cut off from the internet.

Facebook has hired a team from Ascenta, a British high-altitude aircraft company, to develop technology to support its own internet network. Meanwhile, Amazon is developing drones, ostensibly to deliver packages. Judging by the company’s past behaviour, however, it would not be surprising if it had something more up its sleeve.

Getting Africa, the Middle East and rural Asia hooked up to the web will have a huge impact on the development of those regions. But these technology giants also know it will have a huge impact on the development of their businesses, too.

Their core services might be at saturation point in the Western world, but by getting the rest of the world connected they unlock billions of new potential users. What’s more, by supplying the networks, Facebook and Google will establish relationships with those users before they even try to get them to use one of the services they are best known for.

These companies have enjoyed astonishing growth, but if they gain the keys to the web, the next 15 years of expansion could eclipse anything that has gone before.